Cocyte Inc.Violette Dionne: Sculptures

For its second exhibition, 1700 La Poste is pleased to showcase the works of Québec sculptor Violette Dionne.

The exhibition Cocyte inc. is a commentary on our era and its mechanical systems, viewed through the lens of ancient times and what they can contribute to a reflection on current social issues. Hence the satirical title of the exhibition, which refers to the commodification (Inc.) of the sacred (in Greek mythology, Coyctus is one of the rivers of the underworld). With an approach midway between the mythical and the real, it’s an invitation to delve into a world marked by the irreverence and sensitivity of a humanist gaze on the body in motion.

Biography

Violette Dionne was born in Québec City in 1959. She completed an MFA at Université du Québec à Montréal in 1988. Time spent in Europe allowed her to familiarize herself with Roman and Gothic art, from which she drew abundant inspiration until the mid-1990s, for instance in her playful pastiches of religious statuary (Travers saints, Galerie Optica, 1988). Her work is concerned with the human experience and seeks to represent it with both gravity and humour (Toutes proportions perdues, Galerie d’art d’Outremont, 2002). A versatile sculptor who has worked with wood, stone, and cement, she now focuses almost exclusively on ceramics. Over the past fifteen years, Dionne has created numerous public works.

From 1988 to 2010, Dionne’s work was the subject of some ten solo exhibitions. Her sculptures have been shown in Canada, France, and Switzerland. Her most recent exhibition, Figures anciennes et nouvelles,was held at the Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec (Montréal, 2013). The artist lives and works in Montréal, where she teaches sculpture to small groups of students in her studio.

Process

The sculptures combine pipes, outlets, and inlets with a variety of groupings of bodies. Mounted on an open metalwork base, these compositions are not random at all, but grounded in ontological reflection: with her references to the myth of the underworld and its rich iconography, Dionne offers us a vision of today’s world as one torn between the value of primordial actions and the distorting effects of their “reactualization,” or recasting in contemporary form.